In our house, no one really would value the old, nor find it charming, but I immediately fell in love with this [tea set and watch]. My father still laughs at my obsession with these old things, but for me, it’s a little bit of preserving the lost past of Punjab and my family.
Set in black jade, the pendant has the initials of my grandparents inscribed on it in gold, intervowen within one another. S for Suraksha and P for Prem. My grandfather got this handcrafted at Kanjimal Jewllers in Chandni Chowk sometime in the mid-1950s and gifted this to my grandmother on one of their early wedding anniversaries.
The “one thing” amamma is referring to is a dressing table. In its heyday, the majestic rosewood-made dressing table must have grabbed the attention of all in the room with everyone wanting to develop a tress or a mane just to look majestic in the pristine mirror that shone large in the middle of the table.
As we opened the grey trunk or the ‘sandook’ as my grandmother would call it, the metallic smell of ageing iron engulfed us. As we started scanning through her belongings, a small pouch lying in the corner caught my eye. What we found in it were treasures of her past that have traversed through our country, stood the test of time and remain in good shape- her treasured coin collection!
Nearly 86 years old now, she fondly recalls how Surmewalas would sit in a line outside the Gurudwara Sis Ganj Sahib in Chandni Chowk, in those early years of Independent India. This brass surmedani was one of the first purchases my grandmother made there.
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